It was a tough decision, but I just dont want to be part of encouraging those brands. Of course, not all of them are employing dodgy marketing tactics, but the trouble is - those that I KNOW categorically ARE lied to me when I asked the straight question of them.
Another Amazon only brand emailed me the other day looking for a review. They were saying all the right things in responses to my intitial questions. Thing is, I already KNEW they were doing the 'free uke in return for reviews thing' as somebody had emailed me about them. I finally put that to them and they flat out lied in response. That is the end of that. This is becoming a 'thing' and not just with ukuleles - all sorts of products are setting up 'review groups' to encourage reviews and specifically instructing reviewers not to say they had the thing for free when writing their review. That is 100% against the Amazon TOS on reviews and the reviews should be taken down.
The brand that I think most people know led to this (the one I reviewed then deleted) should have set alarm bells ringing before I found out the truth. In the early discussions with them I remember them contacting me and actually asking me to review but only put that review on Amazon. They were not interested in the Got A Ukulele review as such - it was ALL about getting a good review on Amazon. The greater the 5star percentage, the more likelihood the item will appear on page one of searches. Obviously I disagreed, but I should have realised that it was odd that they were asking for Amazon only. Of course, this is before I had worked out the scale of what was happening.
So as I say, whilst it's probably wrong to tar all with the same brush, but when you can't even get a straight and truthful answer from some of them it gets hard to know what to believe. I really only want to review instruments where the brands are completely open and straight. I am doing THEM a favour after all. To not be is them treating ME with contempt and I'm not interested in that.
To be clear - I have no issue with ukes that are listed on Amazon per se - many reputable brands are on there as well as specialist uke stores who use the marketplace as a simple selling platform. But those brands also tend to appear in bricks and mortar stores also.
As for influencing the marketplace - maybe their absence on a review on my page will start to sound alarm bells?
Maybe I'll change my mind down the line, but for now I have plenty of other instruments lined up!